Dropped. Just like that.
Two races into the biggest shot of his life, Liam Lawson was out of the Red Bull seat and back at Faenza. Dream on hold. Questions everywhere.
Most thought that was it. A talent tested, chewed up, and spat out.
But here he is. Still standing. Trying to turn the wreckage into something else. A slow, stubborn redemption.
The Shock
The demotion came quick.
Lawson said he was ready. He’d been waiting for this shot since he was a kid. But the stopwatch cut deep. The gaps to Verstappen weren’t close enough. The debriefs made for brutal reading.
China was the breaking point. He went bold on a set-up swing, hoping to find time. Instead, the car went the other way. Out of balance. Off the pace. No points. No excuses.
Christian Horner called it “a duty of care”. Protect the kid. Give him space to grow. Strip the words back, and it meant something else. They didn’t feel he was ready.
For Lawson, it felt like a hammer blow. Careers have ended with less, especially in the Red Bull driver school.
Back to Racing Bulls
Faenza was meant to be familiar. However It didn’t look that way.
He walked back in with his head down, barely a word, body language screaming that the confidence had gone. Smile missing. Shoulders low. It felt like watching a driver who’d been stripped of more than just a seat.
Those first weeks back were heavy. You could see it in the paddock. This wasn’t the Lawson last year, the kid who rattled the midfield and made headlines. This was a driver looking broken. And everyone whispered the same thing: beginning of the end.
But Racing Bulls is smaller. Calmer. A different kind of noise.The same engineers who’d cheered him twelve months earlier were still there. Same voices on the radio. Slowly, the mood has started to shift.
Peter Bayer called it out. “His old self.” The smile came back. The jokes. Not a complete recovery, but the first steps. Light at the end of a tunnel.
Redemption in Motion
The glimpses started to show, points in Monaco with a P8 were followed by a tough weekend in Spain and a DNF in Canada. However, Austria on a track he knows well, his best result of the season with a P6 was then followed with another 2 points finish to close out the first half of the season picking up consecutive points in Belgium and Hungary with only the Silverstone DNF a blip on the record.
That has been the pattern. Not spectacular. Not headline-grabbing. Just weekends pieced together without disaster. The gaps in qualifying are shrinking. Long runs are starting to look competitive.
Still, no big statement. No “that’s the day he came back” moment. And that’s where the comparison hurts. Isack Hadjar has been throwing punches in his rookie year. Bold overtakes, fearless in traffic. He’s been the one turning heads. The one the paddock are talking about as the natural successor to the second Red Bull seat for 2026.
Lawson isn’t. He’s not box-office right now. But he is still moving forward, which is more than people expected when he walked back into Faenza looking broken.
The Politics of 2026
And this is where it gets complicated. Formula 1 decisions aren’t made on lap times alone.
Ford are joining in 2026. They want presence. They want markets. New Zealand is a target. Having a Kiwi in the line-up suddenly makes sense, not just for the car but for the brand. Lawson ticks that box.
Then there’s Laurent Mekies. He knows both Hadjar and Lawson from Faenza. Knows their flaws, their strengths. Horner is gone. Mekies is climbing the ladder taking on that top role at Red Bull. The politics at the top team won’t look the same in 2026 as they did in 2024/2025. That tilt matters.
So when Red Bull sit down over the break to make this call, it won’t just be “who’s faster?” It’ll be “who fits the story we want to tell?”
What Comes Next
Hadjar is the kid making the noise. Overtakes. First laps that jolt you awake. The kind of energy that floods the highlight reels.
Lawson? Different story. A driver patching himself back together in the shadows, hoping the sum of these weekends turns into something bigger.
That’s the choice for Red Bull. Do you back the noise, or the slow rebuild? Do you lean into the unknown, or into the quiet grind that Ford, the board and Mekies might prefer?
For Lawson, the job is simple. Keep it clean. Keep it consistent. And make sure every time Hadjar shines, he’s not far behind. The gap in the championship between the two Racing Bulls drivers has narrowed, and it seems the gap in selecting which driver should partner Max for 2026 is just as narrow.
Because if he can do that, the driver who looked finished in April could be back in the frame for 2026 for a full redemption and the chance to show what he can do.